By: Hollywood Times Staffer
Photos by: Susan Ryan
If you are looking for a fun way to spend your weekend, check out The New Blues Festival, the largest traditional and contemporary blues event in Los Angeles, which takes place in Long Beach on August 24th.
“This will be our ninth festival, overall, with two in other cities including Huntington Beach and Adelanto,” enthused organizer/musician Bill Grisol
Long Beach has a long history of music and blues music performance in the area, noted Grisolia, who is also a music historian.
“Back in 1980, the first blues festival ran for 27 years and became the second longest-running, annual blues festival in California’s history. This became a fixture at California State University, Long Beach, which owns the radio station K-Jazz, who has one of the largest blues broadcast audiences in Southern California for the past 50 years.”
In 2001, one of the founders Bernie Pearl created a separate annual festival to regain some of the original flavor of the festival which took place for 10 years. “It was truly special to have two annual blues festivals in the area. But due to financial issues, both festivals were put on pause.
“This was truly a great cultural loss,” acknowledged Grisolia, who began the New Blues Festival as an offshoot of his then-band, the New Blues Revolution.
“I love blues music and believed in the intergenerational demand for such a show in this town. For our inaugural event, I thought maybe I’d get 500 or 1000 people and we ended up getting more than 1800!” he enthused.
“We’ve gone onto to entertain thousands of people over the years, bringing young and old artists before they win Grammys awards. We bring Grammy nominees and other important emerging talent. It is extremely rewarding to find a talent like Kingfish and bring him here as a teenager and then he goes onto win a Grammy. Also, the elder statesman, Bobby Rush, who performed at the festival, has gone on to win three Grammys.”
The event is taking place at the Shoreline Aquatic Park, which is a peninsula of land surrounded by the Pacific Ocean, with views of The Queen Mary, Shoreline Village and Rainbow Harbor as well as downtown Long Beach.
“We are also excited about a new amphitheater to be constructed in the same general area, Grisolia added.
International star Ana Popovic will return to the festival to headline this year.
“Ana’s last appearance at the festival, about a decade ago, started trending on social media. A short Facebook live video of her last performance went viral and has been seen by over a million people.”
Other notable talent includes internationally known blues musician Dennis Jones, whom the Long Beach Blues Society gave a rising star award to a few years ago.
His latest album “About Time” was nominated for Best Blues Rock Album for 2025 at the Blues Music Awards in Memphis, TN.
Blues Foundation Award winner Laurie Morvan has toured extensively throughout the USA and Canada, in Mexico and Europe, lighting up the main stages of some of the industry’s most respected blues festivals. She also performed at Grisolia’s blues series at the Bay Theater in Seal Beach, California.
The festival will kick-off with a pre party, on Saturday afternoon August 23rd and full day on Sunday, August 24. The full lineup will be announced soon. Tickets range from $40 to
$125. See the festival website soon at www.NewBluesFestival.com.
